Staten Island's PS 14: NYC Department of Education has some explaining to do

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- PS 14, recently deemed a failing school, will be phased out over the next several years. Meanwhile, a new school, PS 78, to be housed in the very same Tompkins Avenue building, will be phased in over that same time.

This odd situation has members of the Staten Island's Community Education Council District 31 asking a lot of questions the Department of Education has yet to satisfactorily answer.

For starters: What's the plan for the new school?

How is it more than a matter of expensive semantics to "close" one school and simultaneously "open" another, under a different name, in the same building?

What will be different about it that will make it better and more able to survive than PS 14 was?

In order to make this self-initiated experiment a success, will the DOE heap the needed resources on PS 78 that PS 14 never got?

How is it that a school that was rated A in 2008-2009 could be targeted for closure because it's failing as of 2011? How does that happen?